Your DNA says a lot about you, and it’s likely that either you or a relative is represented in one of the DNA databases that are now being used to track down criminals.

But mailing in a vial of spit does not automatically put you in a database that law enforcement can access. Your privacy risk depends which type of company you’re working with.

Android: Microsoft is currently testing a fun new feature that allows you to import data into Excel by taking a picture of it — preferably a data table and not, say, your cat. That won’t do anything.

Facial recognition systems are everywhere, from security cameras that try to spot criminals to the way Snapchat finds your face to put bunny ears on it. Computers need a lot of data to be able to learn how to recognise faces, and some of it comes from Flickr.

Last week, I called a company about installing solar panels at my house. I was told they wouldn't do the installation because of the shade cast my neighbour's massive tree. I was extra surprised when the sales guy told me he was looking at a satellite image that was just a couple of weeks old. Now I know how he got the information. The government makes satellite imagery available with images updated every few days - far more frequently than Google Maps. Here how you can access the images.

This week’s question for Lifehacker’s tech-advice column comes from Nate. While his query is a little business-themed, it’s still applicable to anyone who doesn’t like paying a ton of money for cloud storage— so, everyone.

Researchers at the Netherland’s Radboud University have uncovered serious security issues with several solid-state drives that use hardware-based encryption—vulnerabilities. This could allow an attacker to access a drive’s “encrypted” contents without needing the password that decrypts it.

23andMe has reached a deal with pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline, giving the company access to their (your) genetic data to potentially develop new drugs. Did they just sell us all out? Not exactly.

Android, iOS: You may be right to view apps or services that promise to "track your entire life" with suspicion. What does a company do with that data? Do you really need something to catalogue every place you go, every photo you take, and every mood you feel?

Not all of us are lucky enough to have unlimited data plans, which can lead to a lot of anxiety around rationing a monthly allotment to web browsing, video streaming and other mobile activities. Going over a data limit costs a small fortune, and it can be hard to keep track of where all that data went.

The subject of file backups and online storage came up the other day at a Lifehacker staff meeting, and resident door-holder Nick Douglas chimed in that his solution for backing up his laptop was easy: He never keeps any important files on it. Everything — and he means everything — lives in the cloud.

At this point, most of us have enough data on our mobile phone plans that you don't have to track your usage by the megabyte. That said, you don't want an app that's constantly using massive amounts of data, but something like Twitter or Facebook isn't going to really dramatically move the needle.

It’s safe to say that this recent Facebook access token hack is a complete mess — much more than a simple inconvenience that might have forced you to log back in to your Facebook account on your devices.

And while the company is still sorting out the details and working on ways for developers to mitigate the effects of the attack, there are three things you can do to regain a little more control over your digital life.

Let’s talk about that elephant in the room: Facebook’s recent disclosure that attackers got their hands on access tokens for an unknown number of Facebook accounts is a big deal, since it’s the kind of hack that you, a happy Facebook user, could not prevent.

Need more data on your phone? Why am I even asking, of course you do! Amaysim is upping its mobile data game by offering a huge 40GB on its new $50 unlimited plan, and that's outside of any discounts or special offers. Here are the details.

We’re so used to using computers and phones that they feel like an extension of our brains — it isn’t just me, right? A Google query comes back as fast as a thought, and the information at my fingertips feels intangible like the information in my brain.

Artificial intelligence isn't just for scary algorithms poised to take over our lives — it can also be a fun thing to play with, as we learned when we trained a computer to generate Lifehacker headlines. But you can't play until you have some good data sets to start with.

All the cool services are getting data dumps - that little link you click somewhere in a settings menu that triggers the service to send you all the data it collects from you (and everything you've used it to do, theoretically).

Both Telstra and Vodafone unveiled unlimited data plans for mobile customers this week and some are, again, questioning the use of the term 'unlimited'. Rightly so! We've seen it all before with ADSL broadband, they say!

This time it's a little different. The telcos have wisened up.

Remember when we all got a little creeped out that genetic testing companies can be forced to turn over your data to law enforcement? Ah, those were simpler times. Police found the Golden State Killer last week thanks in part to a relative's sample in a publicly available DNA database. The same kind that your relatives may already be in.